Elon Musk Marks Race to Bottom With Alex Jones, Ramaswamy, Andrew Tate in Live Twitter Chat

The New York Times Dealbook Summit 2023 – Credit: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times

Elon Musk has reinstated infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and to mark the occasion, Musk gathered a panel for an X Spaces conversation on Sunday. The discussion included Jones, Andrew Tate — who faces charges of rape, human trafficking, and organized crime; controversial Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy; Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn; and other problematic figures for an X Spaces conversation on Sunday.

The Tesla/X owner ran a poll on Friday (ending at midnight on Saturday), where users on X, formerly known as Twitter, voted to reinstate Jones, who had originally been banned in 2018. Jones had initially been suspended for a week in August of that year for incitements to violence, and the platform made the ban permanent the next month over a Periscope stream on the InfoWars account in which Jones ranted at CNN journalist Oliver Darcy for 10 minutes in a Capitol Hill hallway.

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Hosted by Mario Nawful, the nearly three-hour session on Sunday found the men, unsurprisingly, crowing about some of their favorite topics. As The Wrap notes, Musk waxed on about his view that people should crank out a lot of babies (a stance he’s held for years, positing in 2021 that “civilization is going to crumble” if people don’t have more children; the mother of a set of his twins said in a biography written about him this year by Walter Isaacson, said: “He really wants smart people to have his kids”). Meanwhile, Jones was fixated on “globalists,” and the other people participating — including Rep. Mike Gaetz and far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec — lobbed praise on Musk and the return of Jones to the platform.

Musk asked Jones to address his conspiracy theory concerning Sandy Hook, where Jones falsely claimed the shooting was staged and that the families of the victims were actors. Jones claimed he was “covering” the notion others had perpetuated. He also reiterated that he now believes the shooting happened.

Just over a year ago, Musk had originally held up the platform’s ban of Jones, indicating that he couldn’t forgive the InfoWars host’s defamatory falsehoods about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting being a hoax or “false flag.” At the time, Musk tweeted that because his firstborn son died as an infant, he had “no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Musk has since changed course. He indicated that his reinstatement of Jones was to defend “freedom of speech,” despite him not agreeing with Jones on Sandy Hook. He also noted that Jones’ last suspension was over insulting a journalist following  Jones’ false Sandy Hook claims. When Musk was pressed about whether Jones would be banned in the future for lying, Musk said X would “follow the law,” but the company was aiming to avoid longterm bans.

“We need to look at the circumstances there. … so if somebody says something that is unlawful, then we will take action if someone does not do something that is unlawful then we would aspire to not take action,” he said.

Musk’s recent decisions to reinstate extremists and conspiracy theorists while also endorsing antisemitic conspiracy theories may play well with his newly-minted, bluecheck-paying base, but it has not bolstered his standing amongst advertisers, who have abandoned X in droves. Last month, while speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, he accused those brands of trying to “blackmail” him and told them, “Go fuck yourselves.”

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